Necessary but not sufficient

People facing an eating disorder - the patient, the family, and the clinical team - have to hold a few necessary but insufficient facts in their head for a long time. Each of them are counterintuitive, complex, and difficult to achieve. Grasping one, no matter how enthusiastically, will not help unless you embrace the others, too:
  1. Eating disorders are a real brain problem, not an accumulation of wrong thoughts.
  2. The first order of business is normalizing nutrition, activity, and eating behaviors.
  3. The mental symptoms will get worse before they get better.
  4. The mental symptoms will outlast the visible and medically measurable symptoms.
  5. Full recovery is the goal.
  6. Relapse prevention is necessary.
Carrie's recent post on #4 is quite simply the best explanation I know of. Read it and don't let that important fact derail all your hard work on the others.

Comments

  1. This is such a brilliant, concise synopsis. I want to read it a million times and commit every word to memory. Thanks, Laura.

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